Ex-traordinary. - Brisbane, Australia
visited Apr 21, 2006
Tonight I had arranged to meet Tony in town for the regular dinner-and-a-movie. Bizarrely, on my way there I ran into Sean and Michael in Pulp Fiction (the bookshop). They were staying in the hotel above the bookshop for the night. Michael gets married tomorrow. Weird. Kate arrives here on Monday! I'm not sleeping well. Grrr.

Hope Harbour - Upper Coomera, Australia
visited Apr 10, 2006
My parents, Kieran and I spent the night on the boat, and spent the morning doing lots of last minute things, and, eventually, having a cooked breakfast together. Sandy and Celine and the kids arrived, and, with surprisingly little last-minute ado, they left around lunchtime. While Sandy and Celine and the kids will be back in two weeks or so, my parents have no intention of returning Brisbane until, probably, late this year - after they've sailed up the Queensland coast and spent the two months their visas allow them in the Trobians, off the east coast of Papua New Guinea. I managed to get back to Brisbane in plenty of time for my evening class. Life should be a little less insane now. For the next week or two, at least.

5 minutes in Brisbane - Brisbane, Australia
visited Apr 9, 2006
I stepped off the plane at 4.25pm on monday afternoon (apr 10th, but this needs to be blogged as 9th to keep the order right). As I had no luggage to collect, I was able to be in the car (Kieran picked me up) by 4.29. Kieran teleported me to uni, and I was in class by 4.55. Pretty amazing really. After class, Kieran picked me up again (nice brother) and drove me home where I arrived just in time for a barbecue dinner with my family - my parents' last supper before leaving on their boat. At 10.30pm, all four of us piled into the car (fitting around all the last minute stuff they were taking) and drove down to the boatat sanctury cove, to spend the night and see everyone off on their sailing adventure the next day. So it was more than 5 minutes in Brisbane, but not by much!

Mad Rush - Sydney, Australia
visited Apr 9, 2006
Sydeny was, as always, a mad rush. That city runs so much faster than Brisbane. Whenever I'm down there it just all seems non stop. Now, I know you could say that is because when you only have 5 days in a place, everything is a rush, but when I lived down there last year I was there for months and it never stopped. Still, at least this time Kate and I managed to do everything essential that was on our list, which is a lot better than last time. There was some unexpected excitement. On thursday night, Kate's flatmate's cat got run over, and we all ended up dashing to an all night emergency vet hospital. The cat is still alive, and, once it has recovered from its $3000 leg reconstruction surgery, will no doubt continue to live a long and pampered life. But it did mean our dvd and gelati plan had to be postponed. Friday was spent running a dozen little errands, and pottering about, but saturday was non-stop socializing. We had brunch at the Chocolate Dog in Newtown with Nick and a bunch of people from Brisbane. Obviously. They were down for Nick's 30th birthday, which was also my flimsy excuse. The evening was spent celebrating Nick's birthday over dinner with the same brisbanites, and about 25 sydney people in a very fancy restaurant in Erskinville. Kate and I opted to share a meal (yes, we're cheapskates) and so had a very pleasant morsel of kangaroo each, followed by a small poached pear and molecule of very nice icecream. It was a very fancy restaurant. After dinner the party moved to a funciton room downstairs where we talked and some people danced to the CD compilation Nick had created for the occasion. I bet the pub had never played anything from the Oklahoma soundtrack before! The toughened party people went on to the imperial around midnight, but Kate and I took the going-home-and-crashing option instead, with a slight detour to drive our friends Eric and Peter home, as well as Oddur who was staying with them. Sunday was then a day of rest, except for going out to Victoria Park to meet a whole lot of queeruption type people who play anarchist soccer there on sunday afternoons. We arrived and sat down to talk to Eric and Peter while we watched to work out if there were any rules, and somehow never got around to the playing soccer part. It was fun to watch the others playing though. There were goals, and vague teams, but no boundaries, and it was played on a bit of a hill, so it was all interesting. Sunday night we finally managed the dvd and gelati plan that had been postponed, and Monday was spent in sleeping in, packing and getting to the airport. Sydney was fun. No idea when I'll be back there - no further flights are booked, and I leave Australia in less than 3 months. Might be next year before I get back there. Ah well. Kate is coming up here in a mere 2 weeks, so that's something.

Idyllic Weather, and a New Computer! - Sydney, Australia
visited Apr 6, 2006
I finally have my first ever brand new computer: a very small, white laptop with all the bells and whistles. It's very exciting. It also has a webcam permanently attached, so I can take pictures like this one! Now I just have to work out how to insure it internationally. It's the single most expensive thing I've ever owned, and just owning it has the potential to get stressful. Insurance will help though. It wasn't a mistake, I am indeed in Sydney. Being the jetsetter that I am, I have flown down for the "weekend" (wednesday to monday). The excuse was Nick's 30th birthday, and a relatively free weekend in terms of uni work, but I don't exactly need an excuse to visit Kate. And to get out of that awful Brisbane weather. It was so horribly humid the last 2 days, I was very, very grateful to be leaving. It was only a couple of degrees cooler in Sydney when I arrived, but the difference in humidity made my hair stand on end. Literally. I've had static problems since I got here. Last night Kate and I had cheap indian (indian food, something else I missed while in Turkey. I must do it again soon!) in Newtown on the way home from the airport, and today I have the house to myself while she and her flatmate are at work. I'm sitting in the doorway of her lovely ground floor unit, with an incredibly blue sky, a very cool wind blowing, looking out at a grassy, tree-ey area that I might go and sit in shortly. In the sun, because it is my favourite sort of weather - the sort where you appreciate sitting in the sun! I'd take a photo, but this camera seems to only be designed for indoors, and the outdoor ones just come out all overexposed. More on Sydney adventures later.

Queer Film Festival - Brisbane, Australia
This place was Average visited Apr 4, 2006
I very cleverly organised to go to Sydney during the Brisbane Queer Film Festival. It's a lesson in effective calendar use for me. However, all was not lost, as this year the BQFF is bigger and better than ever, and started on the Tuesday. My flight wasn't until Wednesday, so I was able to go to the opening night! Just as well. I have only missed one year since it started 6 years ago, and that was last year when I was living in Berlin. In fact, the year before that I came home (from Berlin, by coincidence) on the second last day of the festival, and still managed to see 3 films. The opening night film was called "50 ways of saying fabulous", which is a New Zealand film based on the book of the same name by NZ author Graeme Aitken. I had loved the book - we studied it in Quook, the queer book club at UQ, years ago, so was keen to see the film. It was lovely, and will hopefully get a wider release, and when it does I suggest you all go see it. Or catch the second screening at the Powerhouse sometime this weekend (www.brisbanepowerhouse.org for details). After the film there was the required drag show, accompanied by free drinks, nibblies and the most disturbing iceblocks I had ever seen. If anyone ever offers you a paddle pop "bender", say no. Just do. It was nice to be at a queer event in Brisbane again, but it was yet another reminder of how long I have been away (or possibly an indicator how the community has grown in the last few years). I only saw one person I knew! Apart from the people I was with, of course. Oh, and the guy handing out the free beer knew me, though I didn't remember him at all. Apparently he was my dancing partner in HMS Pinafore years ago. That was a rather Brisbane moment.

Pirates! - Gympie, Australia
This place was Poor visited Apr 2, 2006
I didn't go to Gympie by choice. Actually, I didn't go to Gympie at all, but to a camp site about 20km south of it. And why? For Pirates, of course. OK, so it had nothing to do with real pirates, and a lot to do with the Gilbert and Sullivan musical "Pirates of Penzance". I'm in the current Queensland Musical Theatre Company's producation of it, and it was a rehearsal camp. You'll be very glad to hear that we got lots of very good work done, and the whole first act is now blocked and looking good. And there are some very funny bits. Pirates is on at the Brisbane Powerhouse from the 16th to the 21st of May, and at some hall in Scarborough the weekend. Email me to get discounted tickets for only $20! Yes, this was a shameless plug.

midnight musings - Brisbane, Australia
This place was Awful visited Mar 26, 2006
I've been reorganising my blog. You can tell because it suddenly looks like I was last in Bulgaria. I wasn't. I have now uploaded all interesting photos I have for our Helsinki to Istanbul trip. I think. I haven't yet written anything about Hungary or Romania though, but I'll get there eventually. I suggest that if you want to see current posts, you click on the "date visited" link above, as the "date posted" order is misleading. To see past posts, the best way is by going to "trip itineraries" in the side bar to the right here, and pick the one you want. Brisbane's all a bit dull at the moment. It seems I've been away too long. Although I still know people here, I haven't met any new people for many years, and have lost contact with pretty much all my acquaintances. I still have a few good friends here, but they are all used to leading their lives without me, or we are now in different places, or something. Oh, and most of my friends seem to have moved to Sydney or Melbourne, which is also a problem! So, I spend my days doing uni work (or trying to avoid doing uni work) and hanging out at home. It's probably really good for me right? No distractions from my studies? argh!!!

Distracted... - Brisbane, Australia
visited Mar 20, 2006
Uni is turning out to be pretty busy. Turns out that at Masters level they're serious when they say "full-time". And, to make it even less likely that I will write much to this blog in the next few months, I've had to start a blogspot.com blog for one of my subjects. I'm doing a subject about technology in second language learning, and part of our assessment is to keep a blog where we reflect upon our teaching and learning experiences. It's interesting, but all my subjects seem to require me to be reflective. Perhaps we'll all end up qualified to be mirror balls as well as teachers... Anyway, the new blog is officially my "Serious Blog" and can be found here: www.nontravelblog.blogspot.com And, just for good measure, here is a photo of me in my new glasses. It seems I've been far too studious and wrecked my eyes. It isn't fun.

Cert. TESOL class of 2002 - Brisbane, Australia
This place was Great visited Mar 10, 2006
I discovered recently that over half of my Cert. TESOL classmates were in Brisbane, and decided to organise a dinner party so we could all meet up. Thanks to the wonderful Eileen for hosting and to everyone for coming. It was great to see Juz for the the first time since the course, I think, and to meet his wife Maggie. Another new face was Marlin, Mal and Dave's new baby.

Mardi Gras Again - Sydney, Australia
This place was Amazing visited Mar 4, 2006
Having been in Brisbane a total of 6 days, it was obviously time to leave again, so I spent Mardi Gras weekend with Kate in her fancy new house in Sydney. It was, of course, great to spend time with Kate again (after a whole 9 days of separation!!) and Mardi Gras was a great excuse for us to dust off our tail coats and top hats. It was all a bit of a re-run of last year, as we were with the same float which had the same theme (repeal the same-sex marriage ban) and the same props, pretty much, and we were in the same outfits, but it was still fun as always. Other floats were all quite different, with a couple of decent political ones, and some inexplicable ones (the Ikea float? The Lincraft float? huh?) and some impressive ones (the Ikea float, the lincraft float... hmmm). On Sunday afternoon Kate had organised some of her friends to come over for a houswarming/welcome home/meet the girlfriend party, so I got a chance to meet a few more people I had been hearing about for most of a year, and catch up again with those I had met before. It was really nice to sit around and listen to a bunch of highly educated australians disecting current affairs - something I don't exactly get a lot of overseas. It was very nice. We also went for a walk around Kate's scarily perfect "village living" created suburb. Thankfully she lives right on the edge of it, as the rest all gets a little bit too "Truman Show" with perfect lawns and matched (though all slightly different and "individual") houses and apartment blocks in shades of beige. The perfect blue sky added considerably to the impression, I suppose! Anyway, now I'm back in hot and very sticky Brisbane, I had better get on with catching up on the two lectures I missed while I was away! I'll post photos soon, I promise.

Home again - Brisbane, Australia
visited Feb 25, 2006
I'm home again! Jet lagged and still exhausted even though I've been back a day and a half already. I'm off to see if I can remember how to drive (nearly 12 months since I last did) and visit people.

Going home - Vienna, Austria
3 Stars This place was Average visited Feb 23, 2006
I was only in Vienna long enough to catch a bus to the airport this time. I had hours to wait though, but couldn't do much as I had all my luggage with me. I met another australian at the airport though - I sat down next to her on the only available seat in the whole place (apart from the expensive cafe, of course) and noticed her "Student Flights" travel agent wallet. Figured she had to be australian, and as it turned out, she was a UQ student. We checked in together so we would be next to each other on the flight to Dubai. We parted at Dubai airport, as she was spending a week there, while I waited for my connecting flight. This will be the last post in the "while living in Istanbul" itinerary. I'll be in Brisbane for 4 months studying, then off to again at the end of June to work a summer school in England, and then a 6 month contract somewhere else. I'll keep posting here though, even while I'm in Brisbane. It's not strictly travelling, but then neither was living in Istanbul, and I don't have any other blog site!

Leaving Istanbul - Istanbul, Turkey
3 Stars This place was Average visited Feb 20, 2006
Our last day in Istanbul was a serious of almost disasters. It actually started the day before when they wouldn't let me into Topkapi palace because it was *just* too late. I lived in Istanbul for 5 months and didn't get to see the best Ottoman palace there is. At least we saw Aga Sofya - on the day before we left! It was amazing, especially when you remember it was built in what was the dark ages in England - 6th century AD. It had the world's largest unsupported dome for a thousand years, until Michelangelo topped it with St Peter's in Rome. It would probably have seemed an even more amazingly enormous space and dome if it hadn't been half filled with scaffolding, but at least it is good to see they are working to keep it in decent condition. So having spent Sunday afternoon doing tourist things, we met all the teachers from school for a last meal at a Meyhane - a sort of restaurant where you eat lots of little dishes (like spanish tapas). My favourite kind of meal. We (well, some of us) drank Raki as well - the turkish version of Ouzo. I had managed to escape traying it until then, but I'm glad I did before I left Turkey. While it isn't something I would like to drink regularly, it was quite nice. After getting home much later than planned, we spent a few more hours packing and sorting things, then got up the next morning and continued packing and sorting. There was lots to do. We planned to post a box of stuff each (despite reservations about entrusting anything to the Turkish postal system ever again). Roger came over - I think he thought we could go for lunch, but we drafted him into helping - finding boxes from the supermarket, buying us packing tape and helping squeeze things into the boxes. We ended up with 5 different boxes of various sizes, which was more than we wanted, but there just weren't any big boxes around, it seemed. We decided to take them in a taxi to the post office (even though it was only a 5 minute walk away, it was all uphill, and time was beginning to be an issue!) At the post office the troubles really started. First, they told us we would need to open all our lovely packed and taped boxes so they could search them for dangerous things that couldn't be posted. Such as glass. It turns out that the Turkish postal system doesn't trust itself with anything remotely breakable, so they wouldn't accept glass or ceramics. the main reason I had decided to post stuff home was because my students had given me a beautiful glass and brass narghile (turkish water pipe/hookar) and a lovely ceramic plate. I also had a set of Turkish tea glasses. Everything else in the box I wanted to post was basically packing for those things. The next thing they told us what that it was illegal to post any boxes that had writing on them. As we had used supermarket boxes they said things like "dishwasher powder" on the side, and other things that would no doubt confuse the poor postal workers horribly. We were provided with plain A4 paper and told to cover all the writing. There was also a small mountain of forms that needed to be filled in. All three of us were working on this, and when the first box was finally ready, I took it to the man who was helping us, and he finally weighed it and gave us a price. Over AU$300, or $133 sea mail. And this was for one of the smaller of our 5 boxes. We had been at the post office an hour, had pulled all the breakables out of their nice safe packing and jumbled them into our backpacks, had used up miles of packing tape opening and closing boxes, and we were due at the airport in about an hour. And they wanted to charge us probably $500 to post everything. We decided that for that price, we would take taxis and pay excess baggage if required. It would work out cheaper. So we walked out of the post office, and carried all the boxes back home. There, we swept everything that was left into our backpacks, gave most of the contents of our fridge to Roger, as a completely inadequate thankyou, and ran out the door, still carrying 5 boxes, and my backpack was full of glass and ceramics. Just as another tiny wonderful moment of the day, as I bent down to pick up my backpack for the last time, my old jeans decided to split in the inner leg. Luckily it wasn't too serious or noticable and I was able to ignore it. Not that I had time to do anything else! We still hadn't bought our plane tickets (although they had been reserved) so we had to ask the taxi to stop in Taksim so I could run up to the Yugolsavian Airlines office and hand over large quantities of cash, and then come back and race to the airport to get there on time for the flight! The excitement didn't stop there. We arrived at the airport, found a trolley for the boxes, raced through the xray machines at the airport door, and arrived at the check-in desk. I think we were about the last to check-in as no one else was there. We loaded all our luggage onto the check-in scales, and breathed a sigh of relief that we had made it. Then the guy at the counter mentioned that we had 60kg of luggage between us, and that the limit was 20kg each, and as it was a propeller plane, and quite full, he couldn't let us not pay excess baggage charges. He was very nice and apologetic about it, and said we only had to pay for 10kg, at AU$5 per kilo. We asked if we could take the smallest box hand luggage instead, and he pointed out that that would put us over weight on the hand luggage, but he would let us not pay for it, bringing it down to only 6kg we had to pay for. We decided that was well worth it, and I reached for my wallet, which only had $10 in it. So I asked Kate to find hers. That's when the problems started. Her wallet wasn't in her pockets. Nor in her backpack. Nor in her big pack. We soon had every bag open looking for it, and Kate went back to the xray machines at the door to see if it was there. The poor guy behind the check-in desk was getting quite distressed for us, I think. I started telling him about our dreadful time at the post office, and in the end he said "I'm very sorry for you, and you don't have to pay anything, I just hope you find the wallet!" So if you ever want to get out of paying excess baggage, find a sweet check-on person, and be completely hopeless. Oh, in the end Kate found her wallet in her backpack. It had got itself in to some place at the bottom where both of us had missed it several times each. We made our plane, exhausted, hot and sticky (it had been the warmest day in Istanbul since about October) and still pretty stressed, with absolutely no plans for our arrival in Belgrade. The plane was indeed a propeller plane, with only about 50 seats, and it was much noisier and slower than other planes - it took over 2 hours to get to Belgrade.

Albanian food? - Tirana, Albania
visited Jan 12, 2006
The albanians appear to have been conquered by every force that passed anywhere near them in the last 3 or 4 thousand years, which makes an interesting sort of mix. Italy is one of their closest neighbours (something I hadn't considered) so Italian coffee and food is everywhere, and quite a few people speak Italian, which helped us communicate a bit. The Albanian language (called Shqip!) sounds italian and seems closely related to the romance language group. Half the language, however, is turkish - the Ottomans were the invaders who lasted longest within the last millenium, and they definitely left their mark - in the food as well as the language. Actually, finding real albanian food is a bit hard. The cafes and fast food joints all advertise the same list of things: Byrek (Turkish Burek) Pice (Italian Pizza) Sufllaqe (Greek Souvlaki) Qofte (Turkish Kofte) and of course, the ubiquitous hamburger.

Durres - Shen Osman Kthupit, Albania
3 Stars This place was Average visited Jan 10, 2006
Durres doesn't seem to be marked on this map, which is odd, as it is one of Tirana's major cities, was the capital for the first half of last century and (probably because of that) is the hub of the train system. I've emailed travelpost to ask if it can be added! On the second day we wanted to take a minibus (furgon which is the same as a turkish dolmus) to Kruja, a mountain town with a castle where Skenderbeg, the national hero, once defeated the Ottomans. We wandered around the terrible crossroads that passes for a bus station for an hour or more looking for the right furgon. They are building an overpass there, so the whole area is a great big building site, and the furgons themselves have no signs, it seems you just have to know, or understand what the drivers or 'conductors' are yellling at you as pass. We did finally find an empty minibus with a driver who offered to take us to Kruja for 10 times what we expected - he wanted to play taxi, and take the two of us in an empty van. We didn't want that, so walked away and jumped on the next bus we saw to Durres, which was the capital of Albania for centuries. It was after lunch by then, and the trip took an hour over rough roads in a bone rattling bus, but the couple of hours of sunlight we had in Durres was about the right length of time to explore! We saw the Adriatic and a cluster of mushroom bunkers watching it, a few stretches of Byzantine wall, the modern town mosque (which replaced a historic one that fell down, apparently) and the Roman amphitheatre. We were peering through the fence around the amphitheatre when an old guy came and let us and sort of showed us around - the language barrier was interesting, as was his ability to mountain-goat all over th place while we struggled behind. The highlights were the mosaics that were part of the chapel there, but you could only see them by craning through two sets of iron bars around a corner. A pleasant town for a few hours, but we felt that was enough and found a bus to get back to Tirana.

Albanian Sheep - Tirana, Albania
4 Stars This place was Great visited Jan 10, 2006
Today was the day when Muslims around the world slaughter sheep ceremonially. This was definitely noticeably here in ALBANIA. Of course, maybe it had nothing to do with the bayram (bajram in albanian, or shqip, which is the albanian for albanian). It is entirely possible that there are usually sheep tied to lamp posts in albania's capital city. It is possible that seeing someone walk a sheep by the back legs 'wheelbarrow' style down the street of a clothes market (not even a food market' which I would have understood) is entirely normal. And people playing with sheep in alleys is an everyday occurence. Or maybe not. How would one ever know. Will write more soon - assuming I don't fall down a bottomless albanian pothole and am never seen again.

Shqiperise (which is Albanian for Albania) - Tirana, Albania
3 Stars This place was Average visited Jan 9, 2006
Tirana from the air is very odd. It's in a large flat valley, with a dramatic backdrop of snow capped mountains. It's hard to tell where the city starts, because as far as you can see, there are buildings dotted over the fields. While driving around we noticed the same thing - there isn't any real country there at all, just endless houses and buildings, mostly three storey and brightly coloured, each surrounded by a few fields and haystacks. The overall impression is of endlessly sprawling sparse suburbs, with fields instead of gardens. On the ground you can see the amazing building boom they seem to be having. Every second house seems to be only half finished, and even those that are obviously being lived in often have flat roofs with metal rods sticking out waiting for the next storey to go on. More evidence of the flurry of boom Albania is in is the state of half of their roads. Half of them have been dug up to be re-done, even in Tirana, leaving cars, buses, pedestrians all bumping over rocky lumps and potholes in the choking dust. Oh, and the other half of the roads are just like that normally of course. This probably explains the car wash phenomenon. The first word of Albanian I learnt after getting off the plane was "Lavazh" which means car wash. Along the road into town from the airport there seemed to be signs for them about every 5 metres, most of them not much more than a guy with a hose and bucket, I think!

Holiday plans: Albania, anyone? - Istanbul, Turkey
4 Stars This place was Great visited Jan 6, 2006
My school never gives time off without it being absolutely necessary, such as when a border needs to be crossed for visa reasons (one day off), Christmas (2 days off, though it was apparently 5 last year) and new years (1st of Jan is a public holiday). And, of course, the muslim holidays, like next week. I have 5 days off! So, instead of staying here and climbing our mountains of uni work (Kate's in exam time now, and I have 6000 words of assignments to write in the next 3 weeks) we are doing the sensible thing, and flying to Albania for the week. Well, for a few days, at least. We're flying to Tirana (the capital) on Monday morning, and fly back on thursday. We didn't have much choice - there seems to be only a few flights a week. At least with Turkish Air. Even if Albania does have an airline, I'm not sure I want to fly with them, so I didn't bother doing any further research! Three nights there should give us enough time to explore the capital and possibly the two towns near it that my guide book highly recommends. And apparently that is about as much of the country as you need to see! Except the beaches, of course, and as it's mid-winter, I don't think we really need to see them! Not sure why the idea of Albania has really captured my imagination, but I am really excited to be going to such an unusual place. It probably has far too much to do with the Dilbert comic strip, and its depictiong of "Elbonia". Oh dear...

New Year's Musing - Istanbul, Turkey
4 Stars This place was Great visited Jan 1, 2006
Our New year's plans were pretty much completely unformed until about 7pm, when Roger (one of my friends from work) rang and asked us both to a house party, which broke up aroung 10 so everyone could go into a club in Taksim. Due to general new year's chaos, Kate and I didn't end up going to the club (didn't really want to start the new year in a reggae bar anyway!) but had dinner in our favourite cosy pasta place, and then managed to be in Taksim square for the midnight fireworks. New Year's in Turkey is interesting. For a start, they can't seem to realise that there is a difference between Christmas and New Year, so all the decorating and other celebratory trappings get mixed up: Santa hats with 2006 in flashy lights, christmas trees that say "Happy New Year", even sequined bunny-ears-headbands, which seems to me to be a completely different religious holiday alltogether. And there is a strong tendency for people to sing 'Jingle Bells' after wishing you happy new year. It's all a bit odd really. So, being the end of the year, I thought I'd look at what I've achieved. During 2005 I: Lived and worked in 4 different countries (this is a record for me, I think) Spent a total of only 2 weeks in Bris-vegas (another record) Added 12 new countries to my list of places I've been Lived in Berlin - something I had wanted to do for years Lived in Sydney - something I must do again sometime Helped organise Queeruption in Sydney Met Kate Survived 5 months of long distance relationship Survived 5 months of live-in relationship (including intensive travelling!) Went to Queeruption in Barcelona Found a summer school in Britain that I actually want to teach at again (never happened before) Started a Masters of Education (TESOL) Added turkish to my list of languages I can get by in And something else I did in 2005: failed to finish writing up all the posts to this blog about our travels in august and september. I will finish them - I add a new one every now and then, so check to see if you've missed any. As soon as I've finished the 6000 words I have to write for my Masters course in the next 4 weeks, I'll try to actually get those posts finished! Glad I have a good memory...